Guatemala is a wonderful place to bird!  It wasn't the main reason for going, but Ryan made some really helpful connections which allowed us to go birding together in a lot of different locations.   His PC friends were an immense help in figuring out some of these beautiful birds I'd seen on my own but could not find in my field guides  I had the Birds of Tikal which was marginal but found the Peterson's Field Guide of Mexican Birds to be woefully inadequate.  I foolishly did not bring my National Geographic Field Guide of North American Birds, so was out of luck on warblers, waders, etc. until I got to look at all their field guides.

Listing is not the object of enjoying birds. But it helps me remember what I've seen and re-live it. I naturally saw some I never identified, but really enjoyed the whole challenge and opportunity to see so much of this country.

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At Tikal:

Grey-breasted martin
limpkin
red-lored parrot
aztec parakeet
least grebe
northern jacana
American redstart
cerlean warbler
black-and-white warbler
rose-breasted grosbeak
grey-headed tanager
red-throated ant tanager
woodcreeper sp.
wood thrush
great-tailed grackle
bananaquit
barred forest falcon
slaty-tailed trogan
American swallow-tailed kite
golden fronted woodpeckers
brown jay
plain chachalaca,
black vulture
turkey vulture
Montezuma oropendola
social flycatcher
white-collared seedeater
lineated woodpecker
ocellated turkey
great currasow
keel-billed toucan
melodious blackbird

Other interesting critters at Tikal:

spider monkeys
howler monkeys
cotusa
grey fox
coatamundi
crocodile
basilisk lizard
huge crusty termite mounds in trees that if you poke their outer, crusty
layer with a stick, they'll have the hole repaired in 5 minutes so you
could never tell where it was!
leaf-cutter ants

In Antigua at the hotel there was a golden olive woodpecker that frequented
the courtyard along with the southern house wren, the yellow warbler, white
winged dove and the clay-colored robin who serenaded every morning and
evening with its lovely song.  It had more variety than our American robin
with a strong call that sounded like 'pretty boy'.

In Antigua's market place, beside the ubiquitous house sparrow, there were
rusty-crowned ground sparrows.

At the hotsprings in Zunil I was thrilled to find a number of species in
this cloud forest I did not encounter elsewhere:

browned-backed solitaire (with the world's longest and loveliest song
imaginable)
common bush-tanager
blue-throated motmot
garnet-throated hummingbird
cinnamon flower-piercer
pink-headed warbler (making a nest!)
grey-silky flycatcher (on way to Tutuapa)

Up in the western highlands near Ryan's village, I saw

white-eared hummingbird
rufous-collared robin
yellow grosbeak
northern rough-winged swallows
yellow-eyed junco

I birded in Santa Cruz Verapaz with PCV Doug Booth, who shared his
excellent fieldguide, "Guide to the Birds of Mexico and Northern Central
America by Steve Howell and Sophie Webb with me and helped me figure out
some of the ones I'd seen previously.  The new birds I saw with him were:

black robin
quetzal
emerald toucanet
slate-throated redstart
black-throated green warbler

There were butterflies too beautiful and huge to believe.  Blue morphs were
the most common, but there were many, many varieties and colors--one could
be very busy for days studying them!

To the east side of the country in Santo Tomas just out of Puerto Barrios I
got the chance to bird with PCV Cory Cline who has been working as his
assignment (!)  with Fundaeco doing mist netting/banding.  He was not a
birder in the US before he joined Peace Corps and of Guatemala's 664
species, he's seen over 250 in a year, having held such special things as
royal flycatchers, tiny white-throated spadebills and red-capped manakins
in his hand!  He is anxious to get back to the US and see the North
American
birds.

Together we saw:

long-tailed hermit hummingbird
little-tailed hermit h.
rufous-tailed h.
common woodnymph h.
olive-backed euphonia
yellow-throated euphonia
crimson collared tanager
grove-billed ani
chestnut-colored woodpecker
black-cowled oriole
magnolia warbler
tropical peewee
chestnut-sided warbler
double-crested cormorant
masked titra
sulfur-bellied flycatcher
green jay
white-collared swift
wedge-billed woodcreeper
black-cheeked woodpecker
long-billed gnat wren
Northern waterthrush
plain zenops
scarlet tanager
lesser greenlet
great kiskadee
violaceous trogon
yellow-billed cuckoo
Baltimore oriole

Among the wonderful sounds coming from the jungle, Cory could identify
tinamous, motmots, the nightingale wren (dubbed 'clarinet of the
jungle'--for obvious reasons), pale-billed woodpecker, and white-breasted
wood-wrens.

Back at the hotel I saw a uniform crake with bright red legs early the next
morning walk cautiously across the gravelled parking lot into the jungle!
Spotted sandpipers were in the gardens, as were blue-grey tanagers, scrub
euphonias and a different form of white-collared seedeater who sang like a
canary from the tops of the thatched grass roofs of our bungalows.

Moving further east Ryan had us meet another PCV, Andrew Fleckner who
arranged for an early morning boat trip up the Polochic River at the
southwest corner of Lake Izabal.  In addition to the howler monkeys we saw:

olivaceous cormorant
black-headed trogon
squirrel cuckoo
great egret
yellow-crowned night heron
green heron
great blue heron
bare-throated tiger heron
anghinga
sungrebe
mangrove swallow
green kingfisher
common yellow throat warbler

Near our hotel I saw a yellow-winged tanager in a palm tree, dusky capped
flycatchers and cattle egrets.

The final bird I was able to identify was on the last day, when Ryan and I
drove down to the Pacific coast at Monterrico was a large wren--the
rufous-naped wren, measuring 6-7 inches (compared to our 4" winter wren!)
There were brown pelicans at the coast.

(Full Guatemala Trip Report)

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